Polys should behave in a similar manner. The only exception is that a surface model is controlled by the poles of the surface, so the skeleton only needs to move these. In a polygon model, every verticie is moved by the skeletong. Therefore there may be more work inovled in getting the polygon model setup. Surface models tend to be a little easier to control, since they require less control points. However, polymesh models still produce good results.
Be sure to learn how to use reassign your points, with the Reassing Manually command. This and other related commands are all under Skin.
Have you used Model-Effects/Reduce Polygons? You can tag various portions of your model to reduce the complexity. Not sure what your model is, but there are tools to map surfaces over your polygons to convert it. Try Web, and Shrink Wrap. Be sure to go through the Reference Guides on all of these commands for information.
Hope this helps,
Urp